Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Found a couple feet of snow today and they're going to get another foot tonight! Salmon Hills (NY) is the place to be. It was wet snow this morning, I missed the wax and could run up (and down) the hills... the snow was compacting a lot in the afternoon as more people were skating, but even with three or four ski teams skiing here I didn't see people on the trails.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Thursday evening I was in a bit of a panic because I went to check out the race course, knowing some construction had been taking place, and discovered that North Andover had gouged out the pavement on the first turn in preparation for re-paving. It was about 2-3 inches below the pavement and unskiable without some little ramps or some other fix. I began to devise how to build little ramps in my head. However, much to my relief, the town paved on Friday and my little crisis was averted. On with the race!For this 20th edition it turned out to be a glorious New England Fall day....dry, crisp, bright and sunny and about 40F+ at the start. I made a change this year and decided to just do the race as a classic race, partly because of some bad pavement. 27 racers showed this year, so a good turnout, plus a couple juniors who just toured 1 lap of the course because they are still running cross-country. It was a Harvard Ski Team/CSU affair.

With everyone in the same race it was a mob at the start and while a group of Jackson Rich, Frank Feist, Trevor Petach and a few others shot out in the lead I was left way behind heading up the first hill and having to play catch-up most of the race. I chased Alex Jospe up the hill and then finally caught Victor who, as aways, provided a most excellent draft for a while. We chased down Bob Burnham who had jumped off to a good start with son Jimmy. Alex was chasing Hilary Rich and Audrey Mangan was chasing Alex. Both Hilary (pole tip) and Alex (thingy that sticks out in front of her Marwe ski for classic) had equipment problems, but Hilary got another pair of poles and Alex persevered with a broken thingy. Meanwhile, Jackson Rich had busted open the field and Andy Milne was futilely chasing him....until Jackson pulled out at the end of lap 1 since he is a junior and suddenly Andy had inherited a whopping lead. Jackson took 1.5 minutes off of last years time. Trevor was over a minute back, followed by Frank Feist and Rob Bradlee, who see-sawed back and forth before Frank put the hammer down on Bradlee. On the women's side Hilary won handily despite the one or two hand-offs of replacement poles from Marsha Rich out of the window of the car. Audrey overtook Alex on lap two and hung on by one second over Alex to take second place.Awards of gift certificates very kindly donated by Chris Li from The Bikeway Source, apple and pumpkin pies and Gu and Clif Bars were snapped up during awards as we soaked up the sun and compared war stories and talked politics. Many thanks to my volunteers, Lisa Doucett, Marsha Rich, Pat and Richard Garrison, Jim O'Grady and Walter Page. Many thanks to Chris City for taking photos.

It suddenly occurred to me as I was picking up signs after the race today that the CSU rollerski race is probably the longest running rollerski race in New England and maybe even beyond.